This invention relates to an improvement or modification over rolling apparatus referred to in U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,903 which refers to rolling apparatus, for rolling of turf or grass surfaces including a mobile main frame and one or more undercarriages attached to the main frame wherein the or each undercarriage has one or more smoothing rollers and there is further provided a control arm pivotally attached to the main frame wherein the or each undercarriage is pivotally attached to the control arm such that, in use, the or each smoothing roller closely follows ground contours.
One of the problems associated with the rolling apparatus of U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,903 was the presence of a gap between each of the smoothing rollers which were attached to an adjacent undercarriage. Thus in U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,903 there was disclosed a pair of undercarriages each supporting three smoothing rollers in one embodiment and a second embodiment four undercarriages each supporting three smoothing rollers whereby in each of the embodiments each undercarriage was arranged in a side by side relationship thereby forming a row of undercarriages.
In either of the first or the second embodiments described above the abovementioned gap was located between each adjacent undercarriage thereby spacing each undercarriage and thus each set of smoothing rollers from each other. However in practice it was found that the provision of the gap between each adjacent undercarriage left an unsightly mark on golfing greens and this meant that the putting surface of the greens was not as uniform as would be required especially for greens that were to cater for the world's major golf tournaments.
Reference also may be made to rolling apparatus described in EP 67243, U.S. Pat. No. 998,498, U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,792, U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,753 and FR 2640463 which all relate to rolling apparatus which have a main frame or chassis and a plurality of rollers which do not present any gaps in a front view corresponding to a direction of travel. However none of these conventional rolling apparatus relate to the same type of rolling apparatus described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,903 which discloses a control frame pivotally mounted to a main frame which control frame is pivotally mounted to each undercarriage whereby movement of the control frame causes simultaneous movement of each undercarriage.